FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; Replacing Rap's Anger With a Sense of Humor

By CARYN JAMES

Published: April 26, 1995

"Friday," a high-energy comedy starring the rap artist Ice Cube, isn't aimed at anyone much over the age of 18, but it would be a mistake for wider audiences to dismiss it. This is a ruder, cruder version of the hip-hop movie "House Party," and it offers a fascinating glimpse at the way street life enters pop culture. Like rap and much stand-up comedy, "Friday" is based on opened-eyed acceptance of drug use and guns as part of its characters' lives. The film, written by Ice Cube and D. J. Pooh, makes fun of those realities and replaces rap's anger with humor.

The action takes place on an ordinary Friday, on a working-class street in Los Angeles that could be out of "Boyz 'n' the Hood," the film that proved Ice Cube could act. He plays Craig, a 22-year-old who has just lost his job, and he is surrounded by deliberate caricatures: kind-hearted Mama, strait-laced younger sister and a father who is the focus of much toilet humor of the "Dumb and Dumber" kind. Craig's jealous girlfriend has three-inch red fingernails and a hair weave down to her waist, but he is attracted to the "good" girl in the neighborhood, the one with cute short hair. The humor is often lame. But Gary Gray, who has directed music videos for Ice Cube and Queen Latifah, has put together a slick, watchable movie that gets by on the strength of its ensemble acting and the constant, enlivening soundtrack featuring Dr. Dre, Cypress Hill and many others.

The plot centers on Craig's friend Smokey (the comedian Chris Tucker), who in another era would seem like a refugee from a Cheech and Chong movie. Smokey unapologetically smokes marijuana all day, and after much urging gets the usually sober Craig high too. The film's weakness is Mr. Tucker, whose exaggerated expressions and line readings become annoying. The friends spend the day trying to scrape together or steal the $200 Smokey owes a drug dealer called Big Worm, a bulky guy who wears a headful of pastel blue hair curlers. They also run from the neighborhood bully and hide from drive-by shooters.

Obviously, there isn't much legal activity in "Friday," and that no-nonsense attitude sets it apart from preachy movies about neighborhoods like this. Craig's father offers his son the film's moral message: fighting with your fists makes you a man. It's better than guns and you don't get killed in the process. There is hard-core pragmatism behind this idea; it is also a cynical and exploitive basis for a film. "Friday" may touch its young target audience. For everyone else, it is more intriguing as a social problem than a movie.